Abstract
Minorities have a special perspective on place attachment in border regions. This paper studies the effect of re-bordering processes on howpeople belonging to national minorities perceive borders and a European Union in which cross-border mobility is affected by bordering processes.It draws on a comparative thematic analysis of almost 1,000 articles published in minority language daily newspapers in Czechia, Denmark,Germany, Italy and Slovakia and investigates whether and how their narration of borders and the European Union changed during two key
bordering events: the 2015-2016 summer of migration and the 2020 Covid-19-pandemic. A number of central narratives in the reporting onborders are identified and analysed in detail: the border as bridge, the border as a threat (to the local economy, to the territory, to minorityidentities) and the narrative of a European Union in crisis. By focusing on the often invisible narratives of minorities in Europe’s borderlands, thepaper goes beyond an often nation-centric approach to the study of both borders and the European Union, and sheds new light on the interplay ofde-bordering and re-bordering processes, and the role of borders within a changing European Union.